The staffing of a patient care area to meet the needs of patients is a complex and challenging problem for healthcare organizations. Patient acuity (severity of patient medical condition) fluctuates substantially throughout a work shift. These fluctuations are unpredictable hampering prediction of staffing needs. It is a common occurrence for hospitals to have at least one nursing unit experiencing a staffing situation in which patient care needs exceed the capacity of the nursing staff. Reserve temporary staff and management staff may be allocated to support these situations, however reserve staff are often allocated late or are available after delay and effectively deliver care after capacity saturation. Such reserve staff are also often unable to provide real assistance. Also nursing staff may be too busy providing care to assess care needs and notify management that additional support is required or to recognize the occurrence of a change in patient acuity. Further, if a nurse does call for assistance, resource allocation managers typically have no quantitative data to support or deny a request. The managers are uncertain if a request is based upon fact or perception and personal bias of a manager or supervisor may impact response to perceived chances in acuity.
Untimely or inadequate response to changes in patient acuity may result in an under performing work environment with patients not getting required care due to healthcare provider delay or omission in administering required patient care. Shortage of nursing staff in some regions exacerbates the problem. In order to address this problem regulatory regimes have been adopted or proposed to require mandatory staffing levels and the use of a system to measure nursing staff required to provide patient care. Although existing acuity systems support financial, budgetary and accreditation requirements, they do not provide management support in responding in real time, to shifts in patient acuity and consequent staffing need changes. A system, according to invention principles, integrated with a healthcare information system addresses these needs and associated problems.